The present invention relates to a fingerprint verification method and a fingerprint verification device.
In the field for which security protection is required, such as electronic payment, there may be a case where authentication processing using a fingerprint is performed for authenticating an individual. In the authentication processing, a fingerprint image is captured, for example. In this case, security protection can be improved by using a secret key and a public key which make a pair using program processing, and verifying the fingerprint using an image obtained by decoding the encoded fingerprint image.
Feature (minutiae) points can be extracted from the captured fingerprint image. The feature points of the fingerprint image are branch (bifurcation) points and terminal (end) points of the ridges of the fingerprint, for example. The distribution of the feature points differs depending on the fingerprint. Therefore, an individual can be authenticated by fingerprint verification processing which compares the positions of the extracted feature points with the positions of the feature points registered in advance.